Renewable energy vs. fossil fuels?
It’s a false choice, says John Doerr
Key Points
Society should double-down
on renewable energy investments specifically because of
petro-dictators, says venture capitalist and early
renewable energy investor John Doerr.
The “epic transition” to
renewable energy will continue and be as significant for
the economy as the internet, Doerr tells CNBC from the
Aspen Ideas Festival.
As Russia’s war in Ukraine led to a spike
in oil prices, energy shortages in Europe, and fears that the
natural gas situation will get worse, there’s been a mounting
backlash against renewable energy and the idea the world is prepared
to function without fossil fuels.
What the world needs, according to John
Doerr, chairman of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, is to get
past the idea that it is one or the other.
“Now is the time to double down on
renewable, free abundant energy sources that are not controlled by
petro-dictators,” Doerr told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin from the
Aspen Ideas Festival on Monday. “We are funding both sides of this
war now.”
As a result of the current geopolitical
situation, society should recognize the need for more sources of
energy, and especially the need for more sources of clean energy.
“It’s a false choice. We’ve got to do both,” Doerr said.
He rebutted the claim that it takes too
long to develop renewable energy projects to deal with the world as
it is today. “In 18 months you can deploy a new solar energy at
scale. You cannot build a new natural gas liquefaction plant in that
same period of time,” Doerr said.
He added, “The [International Energy
Agency] says we don’t need to drill for any more hydrocarbons to
meet the market need. We’ve got enough reserves. Develop those.”
Egypt’s abundance of solar and wind will
“allow generation of renewable power at a highly competitive cost –
and also serve as a a key enabler for green hydrogen production.
Doerr, an early renewable energy investor,
remains undeterred in his belief that “we are in an epic transition
from a fossil fuel economy to a clean energy economy. It’s the
largest economic development of our lifetime, it ranks up with the
internet in terms of its impact. ... It’s the best investment
opportunity of our lifetime, but the road will be bumpy.”
In
a separate interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Carlyle Group
co-chairman and billionaire investor David Ruberstein told CNBC,
“everybody wants more climate-friendly energy, of course, but it’s
not easy to get there. What we’ve learned from the Russia-Ukraine
war is that the world is still very heavily dependent on carbon
energy, and right now, the world is scrambling to get more carbon
energy.” He added, “The world is realizing you can’t go to
carbon-neutral policies overnight; it will take a while.”
Doerr said the the most immediate
change that can be made in the energy transition is not about
creating new renewable technology or producing more hydrocarbons but
to cut methane emissions leaks and wasted and flared methane. He
said it “is a productive hydrocarbon, but we are just tossing it
into the air like it is just a free and open sewer.”
He cited pledges from the large oil
companies to put in place better and more effective caps and
controls on their wells, as well as a project called Climate TRACE,
which brings together 50 nonprofits to pool real-time data on
emissions around the world, “like Google Earth, a kind of map you
can track of carbon emissions and specifically focus on methane as a
first and most potent gas.”
Disclosure: NBCUniversal
News Group is the media partner of the Aspen Ideas Festival.
